The day I grew up
by LadyNightRunner
Summary: When Zack's platoon gets home from Wutai, Sephiroth can tell that something isn't right. He's right, in more ways than one. Zack has come home older and with more knowledge of the harsh realities of the world. Rated for WAR. Songfic.


This occured while I was on vacation in Scotland. I was listening to YouTube while I browsed stories, and Darryl Worley's song 'I just came back from a war' came up while I was in the Just In section for FFVII. Thus, thiss tory was born. It's meant to be sweetish, and very meaningful. Sephiroth and Zack have no sexual relationship here, people.

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There was a point in the war where they were separated

There was a point in the war where they were separated. It was at the beginning, before it was considered necessary to send Sephiroth out onto the battlefield. Zack went out with the second wave of SOLDIERS, and returned after the fifth, cranky, tired, and convinced he was never going to properly dry out again; Wutai during the rainy season was _not_ a fun place to be. After the ship came in, Sephiroth followed Zack as his friend stumbled into his apartment and collapsed on the bed, asleep before he could get his boots off. Sephiroth wrestled as much of Zack's battered armor off as he could reach easily, and pulled a blanket over his friend before settling down to wait.

When Zack woke up, several hours later, he mumbled thanks to Sephiroth and went to take a shower. Satisfied that Zack was more or less coherent and conscious, Sephiroth relocated to the couch. Zack came out to join him ten minutes later, settling on the couch and artfully fitting his body around Sephiroth's to ensure maximum contact. Something was up; Zack only got cuddly when he was bothered by something. Otherwise, physical contact was kept to a manly minimum.

"Welcome home," Sephiroth murmured, ignoring the apparent problem for the time being.

"'s good to be back. I missed having someone who didn't take me too seriously."

Sephiroth smiled faintly at that, but twisted around to try and feel Zack's forehead. He couldn't quite reach, his fingertips only just brushing his target.

"What're you doing?"

"Checking for a fever. You're flushed."

"Here, go ahead." Zack leaned into Sephiroth's hand. "You're probably right, I feel like I've been hit by a truck. A very large one."

"You are warm," Sephiroth said quietly, drawing his hand back slowly to make sure Zack wasn't using it as a face-rest. "When was your last flu shot?"

Zack sighed and arched back over the arm of the couch, stretching through a rippling series of cracks and pops.

"B'fore I left, I think. I can't remember; they've been sticking me with so many needles that I've lost track."

"Mako? Or vaccinations?"

"Both. A bio-bomb took out most of a platoon, so they're tryin' to up resistance and immunity at the same time. You know how well _that_ works."

Sephiroth knew all too well. The wrong combinations of Mako and drugs could be deadly. When not fatal, they could have nasty side effects; Sephiroth had one vivid memory of spending the better part of a day handling a violently upset stomach, and of another time when he'd hallucinated and tried to kill the President. Zack had suffered both of the same effects, though he hadn't tried to kill anyone.

"I've never seen fever as a symptom of Mako combination. You've probably picked up some virus."

"Perfect," Zack muttered, drawing back onto the couch and rubbing at his eyes. "That's just what I need."

"You should eat," Sephiroth said shortly, getting to his feet. "It'll help. Come on, I'll accompany you to-"

His phone rang. He fumbled in his pocket for it, still not used to having to carry a phone and answered while Zack went to get his boots. When Zack returned, he was putting the phone away.

"I have to go. Some of the recently returned Second Class are complaining. Go eat."

"Yes, _mother_. Will you be back?"

"Probably not. I'll see you in the morning."

"Mmhm."

But he didn't see Zack the next morning. Since he was in his office and neither of them had any sort of meeting or obligation, this was something of a surprise. Sephiroth waited as patiently as he could until just after ten. Then he dialed Zack's number. It rang four times before picking up.

"'lo?" Zack's voice was rough and heavy with sleep. Sephiroth scowled at the phone. Hadn't he set his alarm?

"Zack?"

"Seph? Whatimeizzit?"

"Nearly a quarter past ten."

Zack groaned.

"_Damn_. I'll be down in…er…fifteen minutes, okay? I've just gotta…I'll be there, alright? Bye."

He hung up before Sephiroth could say a thing.

As promised, Zack arrived in the office fifteen minutes later, finger-combing his hair back as he walked in the door.

"You're late," Sephiroth reminded him.

"I know, slept through my alarm," Zack murmured, more interested in his hair than in his superior. His voice hadn't lost the roughness it had had when Sephiroth called, and he looked tired. Sephiroth decided to not say anything and hope that, whatever was wrong with Zack, Zack would do something about on his own.

Sephiroth had a lunch meeting, leaving Zack alone with a stack of paperwork to deal with. On his way back, he decided to confront his friend about whatever was wrong with him. It was hard to tell if it was emotional or physical, or maybe both, but it was driving him crazy.

When Sephiroth stepped into the office, Zack was slumped in his seat, shirt undone as far as it would go, drenched with sweat and teeth gritted, either asleep or passed out. Nearly panicked, Sephiroth hurried over to him, yanking a glove off as he went, and pressed the back of his hand to Zack's forehead. Yes, that was a fever, and a high one.

"No," Zack mumbled. "It's still alright. They're just…no support…from anywhere…scars…morale, y'know?"

"Zack," Sephiroth said softly, shaking Zack's shoulder. "Wake up."

"Goddamn rosters," Zack said to him. "Dragging…stretched…only so long, even though…miss them. Miss them all…forget it."

"Zack," he said sharply. Zack mumbled incoherently and tried to take a swing at him. Sephiroth ducked it. "Wake up, you idiot."

No response. Angry and worried, Sephiroth drew back and slapped Zack, hard. Zack woke with a start.

"What the _hell_, Seph?" he snarled hoarsely.

"Sleeping on the job," Sephiroth growled, "is entirely unprofessional. You make both of us look bad when you do it. Come on, you're going back to bed."

"What? _Why_?"

"You're running a fever," Sephiroth said, ticking off reasons on his fingers. "Visibly tired, somewhat stand-offish, and talking in your sleep. And I know there's something you aren't telling me. I see things; you ought to know that by now."

"Yeah, but-"

"Make yourself presentable. We're going whether you like it or not."

"But-"

"_Now_, Zachary."

Zack sulked all the way back to his apartment. Sephiroth stayed behind him to ensure that he didn't try running away. Unsure of how long this might take, he'd told his secretary to forward his calls to his cell phone.

"Now," he said, once they were inside and the door served as a backup barrier to keep Zack inside. "Take your uniform off."

"'m too tired for that," Zack said mulishly. "And I'm not in the mood to do a strip-tease. What'll I do for music?"

Sephiroth was in no mood to joke around. He took Zack by the shoulders and marched him to the doorway of his bedroom.

"Get it off. You're covered in sweat, and that can't be good for your fever."

Zack scowled.

"Now."

"Yeah, fine, whatever," Zack grumbled, and slouched into his room.

Sephiroth crossed his arms and leaned against the wall in the hallway to wait. When Zack emerged, wearing sweats and a t-shirt, Sephiroth grabbed him and dragged him into the living room, back to the couch.

"Sit and stay," he said firmly. "I have to get a few things."

"_Woof_," Zack said sourly.

Ignoring him, Sephiroth went to collect what he needed.

Zack was half-asleep when he returned, slumped over the arm of the couch. Sephiroth sighed, put his things down, and shook him.

"Wha?"

"You're fading on me. Here." He handed Zack a thermometer.

"When did I get this?" Zack asked tiredly, obligingly putting it in his mouth.

"When you moved in. You said something about never knowing when you were going to need it, and how it was necessary for every bachelor who…how did you put it? Who didn't have a hot girlfriend to take care of him? No, I think it was more crude than that…"

"Alright," Zack moaned. "Don't rub it in."

"Hush. Talking messes with the reading."

Zack glared but quieted. When the thermometer beeped, he handed it to Sephiroth without bothering to check the reading.

"You tell me," he said. "My head hurts too much to be reading teensy numbers like those."

"Your brain is cooking itself," Sephiroth announced, reaching for the next item on the coffee table without looking.

"In degrees, Seph."

"One-oh-six. If you weren't SOLDIER, I'd have you in the Clinic."

"Shouldn't I be hallucinating?"

"It's the equivalent of a fever of one hundred and three degrees in your average Joe. You're just lucky enough to have an elevated body temperature from Mako. Here, take these. And this. Drink most of it."

He shoved two pills and a bottle of water into Zack's hands. Zack sighed heavily and did as he was told. He chugged the water, which wasn't quite what Sephiroth had intended, then belched gently and threw the bottle at Sephiroth's head.

"What else are you gonna do to me?" he yawned.

"Question you. Here, I can't stand listening to your voice like that, even if it isn't bothering you."

Sephiroth tossed a bag of throat lozenges into Zack's lap.

"Talk about what? Ooh, grapefruit."

"About whatever it is that has you avoiding eye-contact with me since you came home," Sephiroth said shortly. "And don't bother denying it."

"You won't understand," Zack mumbled, unwrapping a lozenge slowly.

"Try me."

"Seph, it's not…you won't get it until you go."

"Go? What- Wutai? Is this about Wutai?"

Zack nodded unhappily.

"Then tell me now, before I get sent out. Tell me what to expect."

"_Pain_," Zack whispered.

"That's something that-"

"No. You've never had it like this, Seph. It's like…like…remember when you went through your classics phase, and you had me read some Hemmingway? Because it would be good for me?"

"Er…yes?"

"Remember 'The End of Something?"

"Mmhm."

"It's like that line near the end, when she asks him what the problem is. _Like everything has gone to hell inside of me. _Just that way. It's sick and wrong and I can't make it go away."

Zack curled in on himself, hugging his knees.

"Keep talking."

"_Why_? Reliving it isn't going to do anything and I feel like shit. Go back to work and let me take a nap," Zack snapped, clicking the throat lozenge against his front teeth.

Sephiroth glared at him. Trust Zack to be cranky and unreasonable.

"You have told me time and time again to open up and tell you about my childhood, using the excuse that telling you would help me accept it and get on with my life. The same goes for you, Mr. Fair, so quit being such a stubborn ass and _talk_ to me. Or would you rather I send you to a shrink for PTSD?"

"The hell? I don't have PTSD!"

"You will if I tell them you do. Talk. Now. Or I will take whatever drastic measures I deem necessary."

Zack surged to his feet, fists clenching.

"Don't you _dare_," he hissed angrily.

"Are you threatening me, Zachary?" Sephiroth asked coolly. "That's grounds for all _sorts_ of punishment."

Zack tensed, his eyes beginning to glow with the onset of true anger.

"You don't have the balls, you jumped-up Cub Scout," he hissed. "And you never have. I got away from what I didn't like. You stayed put and let it go on. You always let things happen. I try to change them. You will _never_ under-" He paused, startled, then choked. Sephiroth sighed, shook his head, and got up to pound on his back. The idiot had nearly inhaled his throat lozenge.

The interlude provided by Zack's coughing allowed Sephiroth to shove him back onto the couch.

"Quit being stupid," he said firmly. "You're sick and you aren't thinking."

"But-"

"In moron-speak, Zachary, that means _shut up._"

Zack went quiet.

"Thank you."

Sephiroth folded himself into the corner of the couch and eyed Zack.

"So. What happened in Wutai?"

"What _didn't_?" Zack mumbled. "After the first month, no one wanted to see us because they thought we weren't doing any good."

"Us?"

"SOLDIERs."

"Where would they get the absurd idea that you weren't useful?"

"Wutai's got some crazy skills going for them. They can get right up close to nearly any location and get away before anyone realizes a dozen men have been killed. All the regulars thought that we would be better at catching them before they got in, like we were some kind of mobile alarm system. It didn't work. We're at the same disadvantage. We lost two guys from my squad in the sixth week, and that was it for the respect the general force had for us. I guess they thought we weren't capable of dying."

"Foolish," Sephiroth snorted. "Immortality is the stuff of legends and children's stories."

Zack nodded, drawing his knees up to his chest and hugging them. It was a position that revealed just how young he still was, and reminded Sephiroth of his own age.

"Tell _them_ that," he said softly. "It was like school all over again- I know you didn't attend a public school or anything, but...on the first day in a new school everyone breaks up into groups, and if you miss it, or no one wants you...you get stuck in with all the other unwanted kids. You all sit together and try not to look at each other, and the rest of the school does it's damnest to deny that you exist. It's horrible, and it's exactly what they did to us."

Sephiroth considered this. He'd had his share of being shunned and avoided, but never on such a scale. To everyone who knew him, he was the mighty Sephiroth, unbeatable, terrifying, and intimidating. He'd never experienced something like this.

"Is that all that's bothering you?"

Zack started to nod, then shook his head.

"I can handle the regulars," he said roughly. "Hell, I put up with it here and at home, so I'm used to it, but-" He cleared his throat, buying time to collect himself. "No one _else_ cared."

"I'm not sure I understand."

"The rest of the world. The people we're supposed to be fighting for_. They don't care_." He'd been staring fixedly at his knees since he'd started talking, and now he looked up, making eye contact with Sephiroth. His eyes were bright- not with Mako rage like they had been before, but with tears. "I saw the papers they sent out to us. Hardly a word about SOLDIER except when a new wave gets sent in."

"They still care. This war is just a little much for some to handle."

"This isn't _some_, Seph, it's _all. _My friends are dying around me, and nobody but me cares! Even the regulars, and we're doing our best to save their sorry butts so we can all go home!"

"They're frightened."

"So was I!" Zack yelled hoarsely. "I spent every waking minute scared stiff that I was going to be next! That I was going to get a knife in the gut or be killed by some spell or have my skull kicked in by their goddamn ninjas!"

"You're going to strain your throat," Sephiroth said delicately. He didn't want to tell Zack to quiet down outright, but that really couldn't be good for him.

"I don't care! By the time you get out there, _if_ you get out there, it's gonna be with everyone cheering because you're a hero and _you haven't done anything_! Have you ever been to Wutai?"

"Once. When I was thirteen.

"How did they treat you?"

"Like a rare animal, to be admired but not touched for fear that I might bite."

"It's not like that anymore. They hate all of us. Everyone from ShinRa. Then they hate SOLDIERs, because of the Mako and how it makes us stronger then any training they can come up with. The stronger you are, the more they hate you, so I'm at the top of the hit-list. And they can tell. I don't know how, but they can."

"Tell?"

"Tell that I'm a First Class. I was in and out of the Med Center six times in my first month there. More than twice as often as the average Second Class. More than most of the low-level Firsts. I had one time, when I got put on sentry duty, when we managed to stop an ambush. Know why? One of the members of the group coming after us decided to try and kill me instead. He jumped on me from behind, before I even knew he was there, and tried to gut me. I..." Zack trailed off, staring at the wall over Sephiroth's head.

"You what?"

"I killed him. And you know what? He couldn't have been older than fifteen. He was just a _kid_. They hate us so much that they're sending kids to kill us, and the kids _want_ to kill us."

"You would have been killed otherwise," Sephiroth said firmly, trying to hide how bothered he was by the information Zack was revealing to him. "It was bound to happen."

"I choked him," Zack whispered. "I crushed his windpipe with my _bare hands_. Last thing he did was call me a monster and stab me in the leg."

_More scars_, Sephiroth thought. _More scars to remind him._

"If it was his belief, then there wasn't anything you could have done to make the situation any better."

"I could have let him killed me."

Sephiroth froze. Those were words he'd never thought he'd hear coming from Zack's mouth. He would have let himself die rather than kill a child.

"And what would I have done, then?" he scowled. "What would have happened to me without you here to let me vent?"

"You would have survived-" Zack began, but Sephiroth threw a pillow into his face, cutting him off.

"No, I might not have. In fact, it's highly unlikely. You keep me sane and prevent me from going on a homicidal rampage throughout the building. Think about it; your death could have caused countless others. It would _not_ have been better for you to have died. It wouldn't have fixed things."

Zack scrubbed half-heartedly at the tears working their way down his cheeks.

"He was a _k-kid_, Seph. I was his age when I _joined_ the army, and he was out in the field, totally ready to kill anyone that g-got in his way." Zack hiccupped, steadily losing ground against the tears and exhaustion. "I just...it didn't hit me 'til later, Seph. When w-we got back to b-base, and they'd stopped con-congratulating us on preventing another massacre...it was like I'd been punched in the stomach. I j-just realized, right then, that I'd killed some kid who was n-nearly my age. I mean...f-five years isn't m-much."

"It can make all the difference. Five years ago, you were getting shuttled around the regular army because they didn't want to enter a child into SOLDIER, no matter how much he wanted in. Five years ago, I used monster extermination as a way of working out my frustration."

"Five years ago I didn't know I was going to have to kill kids," Zack said, his voice entirely clear for a moment. Then he broke down completely, curling back in on himself and sobbing. He didn't cry pretty or neatly, the way Sephiroth had seen twice before. This was loud, messy, and heart breaking.

Sephiroth hesitated, then rolled forward onto his knees and wrapped his arms around Zack. His friend stiffened for a moment, as Sephiroth rarely instigated physical contact, then uncurled and did his level best to climb into Sephiroth's lap.

"Zack, it-" No, it would be better not to say anything. He'd let Zack cry it out, and then he'd wrestle him into bed, drug him senseless, and call the both of them in sick for tomorrow. For now, that would have to do. Until he went to Wutai, he wouldn't be able to understand, and he couldn't pretend to when Zack was so obviously shaken by the war. If he was to understand, and he was going to, for Zack's sake, then he would have to wait.

Later that week, while Zack was still in bed with the flu, Reno came in asking where his favorite drinking buddy had gone. Sephiroth looked up from his paperwork, eyeing the redhead, and shrugged.

"He just came back from a war, Reno."


End file.
